I play the guitar-sort of. Or at least that is what I say when people ask. They walk into my apartment and see the guitar case. "Do you play?" they ask.
"Yeah. Well... kind of. I try." By the end of the inevitable exchange, sometimes I have made it sound like I have only picked up a guitar only three times in my life.
The truth is that I am not an accomplished guitar player. I don't practice very much, and the things I can play are basic. I took a guitar class, but I am not too much more than a beginner.
On the other hand, I can play quite a few songs well enough that other people can recognize them, and if someone sings along I can produce a decent song. Whenever I play for non-musicians after denying my guitar playing ability, I get a chorus of, "That was good," or "What do you mean you can't play?"
To anyone who doesn't play the guitar, the sounds I make with my instrument certainly sound like music. And although accomplished musicians and guitar players may be able to hear a whole bunch of mistakes, and the music I make may not sound so good on a universal scale, there is no question that what I play is music.
So why do I have such a hard time answering the question "Do you play guitar?" with a yes? It is a good question because I do play the guitar-there is no question about it. I pick up the instrument, put my fingers down on the strings and play chords and notes that I try to string together into songs. Because I do not practice much or play often the music I play may not be very good, but I do play guitar. Playing occurs when one picks up the instrument and makes the sound come out. If you think about it, the question "Do you play?" is not the same as "Are you any good?"
When the question is asked of me, though, I do think that if I say "Yes, I play," the inquirers will assume I play well. And so instead of saying yes, I hedge my answer so nobody will get their expectations too high.
There are many things each of us do for fun and enjoyment, or even out of necessity or desire, that we are not necessarily good at. When asked about these things, we might want to pretend we do not do them because we feel like by letting on that we do something, we profess expertise. If I say I like to draw, then people will think I am a good artist. If I am not a good artist, I might want to keep my passion for drawing a secret. It seems that if we are not experts at something, the fact that we do it seems not to count.
We need to feel more free to talk about the things we do-and even enjoy-that we are not good at. Professing that we do something does not denote expertise, and we shouldn't be afraid to be non-experts about things. In fact, if you are not so good at something you like to do, but are still doing it, that's a good sign. It means you don't give up when you aren't able to succeed right away at something.
It is good to do things that are not our strongest points. The truth is, we don't have to be good at something to say we do it. When we say we do something-such as writing or drawing or playing softball or anything-it means just that. We do it. It doesn't mean we are good at it. It means we take part in completing the act. That is all. We need to also accept each other as people who do lots of things-and not hold others as experts for everything they do.
That way, when someone asks me "Do you play guitar?" and I say "Yes," they will not assume they know what that means. They will then ask questions such as, "How long have you been playing?" or "Are you any good?" in order to find out the answers to these questions.
When we think about it, there are lots of people who do this now... and people really do not assume as much expertise of us as we sometimes think. So we need to stop worrying about whether we are good at all of the things we say we do, and, to borrow from Nike, just do them!
Heather Morris is a Trinity senior.
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